If you like your health insurance you can keep your health insurance

The only difference is you will pay less – on average $2,500 less. Does anyone else remember hearing that repeated over and over and over by somebody in speech after speech and commercial after commercial?

Speaking of health insurance, and we were at my office this week, how about that Obamacare? Oh, not the website. That’s baby spit. I got wind of something juicy.

My company offers outstanding health benefits. I won’t go into details but there aren’t 100 companies in the US that have better. Best I’ve seen in my 20 years as a recruiter.

The first year the Obamacare mandate applies to businesses the company will have to pay a fine of $43 per employee for offering a “Cadillac Plan.” They are being fined for offering benefits deemed too good by Obamacare.

You have to have health insurance or pay a fine. Unless your health insurance doesn’t meet minimum coverage levels defined by Obamacare. Then you still would have to pay the fine. But that’s not a problem because insurance companies will no longer sell plans that aren’t compliant with Obamacare’s minimum coverage standards. So you just have to pay for your policy but you’re getting better coverage. But not too good of coverage. Then you have to pay a fine.

In 2018 – conveniently enough, two years after Barack Obama leaves office – the fine will rise to over $20 million. Annually. As a result the company will be forced to pare back the health benefits now offered to its employees with no out-of-pocket costs.

Pretty sweet deal, huh?

Wait until this hits the media industry and Silicon Valley and the people around DC who can’t wrangle an exemption and everywhere else people enjoy great health benefits and smugly supporting the Democrats who succeeded in passing a law that will change their health coverage for the worse. For their own good.

I can laugh because I’m a contractor – no benefits. What kind of a sucker gives up money out-of-pocket for health insurance when the law proscribes guaranteed issue and no preexisting conditions? I’m working on an app that will immediately submit your application form to an insurance company when the accelerometer in your phone reads an impact of 3+ Gs. Tied to your car’s computer when airbags deploy too. You’ll be insured before the ambulance arrives. I think it will be huge.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for the pooch, though. Obamacare will have the Democrats screwing it for years.

Oh and one other thing to remember. Every time the law changes in any state that hasn’t set up an exchange and uses the federal one then the code is going to have to be rewritten. The more interations, the more bugs. And one law of programming goes “the more bugs you eliminate in code the more you invariably create more bugs which are harder to find and fix”
also think about the identify theft aspect. Wait till the news stories start leaking out about millions of people’s IDs getting compromised.
The fun is just beginning on this.

jim_m

Nope, by 2018 the left will have forced a fully nationalized healthcare system on us and they will be dispensing health care based on your political affiliation.

Retired military

BTW the best things for the republicans in congress to do now is nothing. Sit back and let it crash and burn. Don’t propose postponing it. Make the dems do it. And then sit back and vote against postponing it. when Obama comes out with the exec order postponing it go on tv and talk about the law of the land and how Obama is violating it. When asked why they didn’t support a postponement say you didn’t want to get accused of being a racist terrorist by the administration, Harry Reid, Pelosi and the mainstream media like they were during the shutdown.
Run commercials of all the dems doing all the talking points they had during the shutdown about how Obamacare was the law of the land and people against it were racists and terrorists and anarchists. In short make them eat crow every step of the way

Yes I am a vindictive bastard.

LiberalNightmare

I can appreciate a little vindictiveness, but the truth is both parties want this.

Screw ’em all. I’m embracing the Cloward Piven strategy.

Tomorrow, Im declaring myself to be an illegal alien, then Im going to sign up for welfare, food stamps, an obama phone and wheatever else I can get.

Chico. Pound sand. I earned my benefits. I didn’t ask for handouts which all your liberal buddies are asking for. Anyone wanting what I have is more than welcome to join the military for 20 years and get them. Oh wait. Your friends in Congress are making that harder because they hate the military so much.

Where were your socialist friends when I was getting 2 hours a sleep a day out in the field for a week or 2 at a time, when I dragged my family over hell’s half acre every 2 years or so, when I spent a year apart from my family, when my kids had to leave friends behind and change schools in the middle of the school year or when I went to 2 friends funerals who were killed in Afghanistan, Where were your socialist friends who want a handout when I was an E5 eligible for food stamps and WIC and didn’t use either one.
Where are your socialist friends when the military has a higher divorce rate than the rest of the US population.
You could take away my retirement pay, my Tricare and my commissary privileges and I would still be able to pay my mortgage, put food on the table and pay for my healthcare. Take away your typical Obamabot EBT card and welfare checks and they would starve.
When I was 18 I was pulling guard duty on the DMZ in South Korea collecting my govt paycheck, not playing call of duty in my mom’s basement collecting welfare checks.

Indeed, those who have (demonstrably) served have earned several times over the deferred compensation they receive.

jim_m

There is a difference between the military and socialism. Too bad you are too much of a blinkered ideologue to make that distinction. So much for the left understanding nuance.

Vagabond661

It’s the illegals who didn’t earn the benefits.

Retired military

Chico
If I remember correctly you said that you couldn’t collect your benefits until you were 60. If that is so than I am guessing that you were either national guard or naval reserve.
I only mention this since the subject of your service came up.

JWH

BTW the best things for the republicans in congress to do now is nothing. Sit back and let it crash and burn. Don’t propose postponing it. Make the dems do it.

Actually, the Republicans should have done this in the first place.

GarandFan

I like the comments coming out of Democratic mouths about ‘tweeking’ ObamaCare. Maybe they should have read it BEFORE passing it. If allowed to continue, “tweeking ObamaCare” will become an annual ritual in the halls of Congress. Just as it’s an annual ritual in the halls of Parliament in dear old England.

Lawrence Westlake

You’re just catching wind of this now? FYI, this was old news, three years ago. The penalties for “Cadillac” coverages are why pretty much all the major labor unions and big Dem donor corporations asked for and received waivers from HHS. That aside, the real issues with Obamacare are the 50-employee base threshold (if you’re just above it you’ll fire people and if you’re just below it you won’t hire people), the 30-hour threshold (that’s why hordes of workers are being converted from full time to part time and then stripped of all health benefits) and the unfunded mandate of a massive expansion to the Medicaid rolls (Idiocracy, personified).